"I imagine it is. It always seems to me that soldiers
– at least the best soldiers – are people who fight
battles for people who can't fight for themselves. Yes he is brutal. I'm sure the SAS is
brutal. And if
you've got someone fighting for you, you want them to be a bloody effective soldier. And I
think it's part
of the joy of Sharpe.
"I remember somebody saying to me way back at the beginning, I mean twenty years ago,
with
Sharpe's Eagle, how astonished they were that Sharpe had got the villain at his mercy,
with a sword at
his throat and the villain is screaming to be let off, but Sharpe just killed him. He said
this is something
new in fiction, that a hero would do this to an unarmed man. It didn’t seem unusual
to me, but I’m
steeped in the Napoleonic period and it was a very brutal time.
"Sharpe has had a very brutal upbringing and he's serving in an incredibly brutal
army. The Duke of
Wellington said of his own men, "I don't know what they do to the enemy, but by God
they terrify me".
But I hope Sharpe uses that huge anger and ferocity and brutality in the service of good.
Perhaps he
isn’t such a force for good in the Indian books, because here he's fighting for
himself, but in the later
books, when he's got more responsibility, I think you'll find he's on the side of the
angels."
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